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RITUAL AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SACRED ARTIFACTS: AN ANALYSIS OF ANALECTS 6.25 Wayne Alt Department of Philosophy, Community College of Baltimore County at Essex, Maryland

Introduction In Book 6, verse 25, of the Analects, the Master remarks on the gu Ú, a kind of bronze ritual drinking cup that once played a role in religious rites sacred to the rulers of the Shang dynasty (1570±1045 B.C.E.).1 His words, gu bu gu gu zai gu zai Ú ÚÚÉÚÉ, are among the most enigmatic in the Analects, and commentators have not known what to say about them. Differences among many of the English translations of 6.25 can be traced to different ways of answering fundamental questions about the passage. What sort of claim does the adverbial particle bu negate: an identity, a predication, or an attribution of action? If it negates an identity claim, how can the passage avoid selfcontradiction? If it negates the attribution of properties, what kind are they? Are they properties intrinsic to a thing's being a gu or relative to the way it is regarded and used? Being inanimate, a gu lacks intentionality. So if bu negates the attribution of belief or action, the belief must be one that an agent has about the thing, whereas the action must be one an agent performs on or with it. But what sorts of beliefs and actions could they be? Finally, what is the function of the sentential particle zai É? Does it express a tone of approval and affirmation, of sarcasm and irony, or of surprise and doubt? The present essay sorts out several well-known translations of 6.25, and in the process proposes answers to the questions above that yield a consistent reading of the passage and an interpretation of it that coheres with a major theme of the Analects. I argue that 6.25 is a warning to heed an important truth taught by the Master, namely that the viability of a society requires a collective will to practice the rites and follow the rules and conventions that constitute its social roles and artifacts. Paradoxical Translations Some translators treat bu as a particle negating an identity claim. Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., for example, have recently proposed the following: A gu ritual drinking vessel that is not a gu ritual drinking vesselÐa gu indeed! A gu indeed!2

Their translation is close to that of D. C. Lau: A ku that is not truly a ku. A ku indeed! A ku indeed!3

Philosophy East & West Volume 55, Number 3 July 2005 461±469 > 2005 by University of Hawaiì Press

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Both translations treat 6.25 as a topic-comment construction. The topic is a gu that is not (truly) a gu, whatever that might be! How we interpret the comment depends on how we read zai. If we take it as affirming what is stated in the topic, the entire passage must be dismissed as self-contradictory. For it would amount to the claim that `à gu that is not a gu'' is, after all, a paradigmatic instance of a guÐ`à gu indeed!'' But the blatant inconsistency of this interpretation makes it difficult to imagine that the Master actually intended something like it, and if he did we should have questions, not about the passage but about the Master. Like Lau and Ames and Rosemont, Edward Slingerland treats 6.25 as a topiccomment construction. Rather than treat zai as a particle of affirmation, however, he interprets it as an expression of skepticism and disbelief: A gu that is not a guÐis it really a gu? Is it really a gu? 4

Instead of affirming that a gu that is not a gu is indeed a gu, the comment raises a doubt about that claim. But Slingerland's attempt to avoid paradox does not go far enough. The problem is still with the topic. It is self-contradictory, and thus it could mean anythingÐor nothing. A novice mistakenly using a zun as a gu might have been asked by the Master, `Ìs it really a gu? '' 5 But this question cannot sensibly be asked of a gu that is not a gu, since such an item could not be a proper subject of predication. To make sense of 6.25, a translator either must avoid treating the topic as a self-contradiction or find a way to vitiate its inconsistency. Non-Paradoxical Translations Rather than interpret zai as a particle that affirms what is asserted in the topic, or as one that raises a question about it, another way to read it is as a marker of irony. On this interpretation, when the Master uttered ``gu zai,'' he did so with a nudge and a wink! The topic can still be read as a self-contradiction, and gu zai can be translated as `À gu indeed!'' The comment, however, is not to be read as an affirmation of the topic. Instead, it is to be understood as a sarcastic dismissal of it. Even if this ironic reading of the comment neutralizes the topic's inconsistency, however, why would the Master formulate the topic in such a paradoxical way, and why does he dismiss it? In remarking on 6.25, P. J. Ivanhoe and Bryan Van Norden point out that commentators generally agree that Kongzi's sigh of displeasure was provoked by the fact that the sort of gu being used by his contemporaries was not a proper gu, although there is disagreement over the question of what precisely was wrong.6

Some translations, we shall see, not only avoid treating the topic as a selfcontradiction, they suggest what the Master thought was wrong with the sort of gu described by it. Arthur Waley analyzes the character gu into its two component graphs, jiao Ò or ``horn'' and gua Ü or ``gourd.'' The character, he notes, `ìs written `horn' beside

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`gourd,' though the object in question is not shaped like a gourd and is not a drinking-horn.'' 7 He proposes the following translation: A horn-gourd that is neither horn nor gourd! A pretty horn-gourd indeed, a pretty horngourd indeed.8

This translation avoids inconsistency by treating ``horn'' and ``gourd'' as elements of a single compound term, ``horn-gourd,'' which functions as a name for the type of vessel that the Master designates by the first occurrence of his use of gu. Just as `À buttercup is neither butter nor a cup,'' so, too, `À horn-gourd is neither horn nor gourd!'' can be asserted without contradiction. Waley's comment on this passage describes the mind-set that motivated the Master's remark: The saying is, of course, a metaphorical way of lamenting over the political state of China, ``ruled over'' by an Emperor who had no temporal power and local sovereigns whose rights had been usurped by their ministers.9

There is, however, a sound philological reason for dismissing his translation. The character gu, as noted, is a compound of two component graphs, jiao and gua. There are two possibilities. Either gu is a hui yi , `àssociative compound,'' with these graphs as its meaning components, or it is a xing sheng br, ``determinative phonetic compound,'' in which gua functions as a phonetic marker contributing little or nothing to the compound's meaning. Either way, there is simply no grammatical rule in classical Chinese that transforms the negation by bu of either kind of compound into the negation of the disjunction of its components!10 James Legge's English equivalent for the first occurrence of gu in 6.25 is an adjective-noun phrase, ``cornered vessel.'' For the second occurrence, he substitutes the adjective phrase ``with corners''; so he translates its negation by bu as ``without corners.'' In English, when a fused adjective-noun phrase, such as ``floppy disk,'' functions as a general name, the adjective part of the phrase can lose its descriptive function over time. Nowadays, for example, floppy disks are not floppy, so ``(a) floppy (that is) not floppy,'' while strange, is not a contradiction. Legge's translation avoids inconsistency by relying on this peculiarity of English usage: A cornered vessel without cornersÐA strange cornered vessel! A strange cornered vessel!11

This translation assumes that having corners is important to being a genuine gu, whereas not having them makes what lacks them ``strange.'' If by corners Legge had in mind the prominent flanges exhibited by some gu, especially from the late Anyang period (twelfth to eleventh centuries B.C.E.), his translation makes some sense. For consider this description by John Pope and Thomas Lawton of an exquisite gu from this period:12 Most striking are the bold segmented flanges that rise from the bottom of the vessel to the top, with three interruptions, and protrude beyond the edge of the lip. Each flange is

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composed of four segments, corresponding to the four horizontal zones of the design. The effect of this segmentation is to further emphasize the quadripartite division of the decor which imposes ``corners'' and ``sides'' of a square or rectangular vessel on one actually round in section.13

There are, however, ritual vessels from earlier periods of Shang history that were regarded by the ancients as gu even though they lack the features described above. Having these kinds of flanges was a stylistic development deriving from earlier gu prototypes. But they were not as essential as having a beveled lip seems to have been essential to being a gu. So one of the assumptions on which Legge's translation rests, that having corners is essential to being a gu, is mistaken. Lau, Ames and Rosemont, Slingerland, Waley, and Legge all agree that ``gu bu gu'' is the topic of a topic-comment construction. Yet not all translators parse 6.25 as a topic and its comment. Raymond Dawson treats it as a conditional: Even if a gu is not used as a gu, it is indeed a gu, it is indeed a gu.14

There is, however, no semantic marker in the original passage that suggests either `ìf'' or `èven if'' as English equivalents, and nothing about the passage's syntax implies the conditional mood. Moreover, the ontological status of a gu, given Dawson's translation, is unclear. If he is right, a vessel not in use as the rituals of the Shang prescribed that a gu should be used, would still be a gu; indeed, it would be a paradigm case of one, a gu indeed. But is he right about this? Constructing and Deconstructing a Gu Suppose that for a period of a single day every two months a Shang dynasty priest used the bronze cup described above by Pope and Lawton in a ritual performance that followed the rules prescribing how a gu should be used. But the rest of the time, except when it was being cleaned and polished, the vessel sat in the closet. During the time that it is not being used in a ritual performance, it would still be proper to regard it as a gu. Dawson's translation accommodates this kind of case easily. But we can think of other cases where it is not clear just what we should say. Suppose the practice of the rites was in decline. In Confucius' time (551±479 B.C.E.) the rituals of the Shang had not been observed for centuries. One might have seen a gu ritual vessel passed down from the Shang that, having fallen into disuse, functioned as a drinking mug, a flower vase, or simply a curiosity from a bygone era. Perhaps Confucius himself (assuming he is the master in 6.25) was commenting on an item such as this. Or perhaps he was remarking on a Zhou version of a Shang gu. The Zhou continued for centuries to make and use bronze utensils modeled after Shang prototypes of ritual vessels. One example of such a vessel from the late eleventh or early tenth century B.C.E., referred to by Wen Fong as a gu,15 may well have been used not as a ritual utensil but as tableware at banquets given by Zhou nobility. But whether Confucius was remarking on an artifact handed down from the Shang or a Zhou imitation of a Shang prototype, he may well have asked himself whether or

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not such a utensil, insofar as it was not used in any of the ways that the rituals of the Shang prescribed that a gu should be used, was really a gu. This disregard for the rituals of the ancients, I shall argue, is what the Master was lamenting in 6.25. We can speculate with some degree of accuracy about the intrinsic properties of a ritual vessel that Confucius thought were necessary to its being a gu.16 Being forged out of bronze, rather than molded out of clay or carved out of jade, was presumably important to him, although not necessary to a vessel's functioning as a gu. To function as a gu, a vessel must hold liquid and be easily grasped and raised. So it is essential that a gu's shape and size conform to certain patterns and dimensions. The Master would have objected, for example, to a Zhou imitation of a gu prototype from the Shang if it were too big to hold and thus too clumsy to carry out the libations prescribed by the rites. He also understood that the sum of all the intrinsic properties of a gu are not enough to make a vessel a gu. Being a gu, like being a mug or a flower vase, is what John Searle calls `àn institutional fact'';17 it is a fact determined by how people consciously relate to things. `Ìn a sense,'' says Searle, ``there are things that exist only because we believe them to exist.'' 18 A gu is such an item. For, in addition to its intrinsic properties, being a gu requires having what Searle calls intentional properties, that is, properties that depend on how people collectively use, represent, and talk about things. The rites of the Shang consisted of constitutive rules analogous in ways to the rules of chess. In playing chess, only a piece that can move and capture other pieces in certain ways counts as a castle. In performing the rituals of the Shang, only a vessel that is used in the ways that the rites prescribe that a gu should be used counts as a gu. Just as one can castle only when playing chess, one can gu only when performing the appropriate rituals. So if people were to stop playing chess, and its rules were forgotten, what used to be called a castle would no longer be a castle. If it were passed along to later generations they might know enough to call it by its ancient name, but a critical curator of antiquities would regard it as a castle in name only. Confucius, we know, studied the rituals of the ancients.19 During his lifetime he may actually have seen, and even held in his hands, what Shang language and custom called a gu. But would he have thought of such a utensil as a paradigm case of a gu, a gu indeed, or would he have seen it as an empty vessel estranged from its reality by the disappearance of the culture and the rites that once constituted it? I suggest that he would have regarded it in the latter way, and that 6.25 offers an expression by him of that regard. Bruce and Taeko Brooks speculate that in 6.25 ``There may be a pun on gu `lonely' in the sense `discontexted.''' 20 Estranged from the only context in which it can properly be considered to be a guÐthat is, its ritual use according to the rules prescribed by Shang ritesÐsuch a vessel would have lacked features essential to its being a gu. The Brookses translate the passage as follows: A gu not used as a gu. What a gu! What a gu! 21

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They assume that the negative particle bu is an adverbial auxiliary and that the second occurrence of gu is a verb of action. The action described by the verb must, of course, be one that is taken by a subject in relation to an object. In this case, the actions would be the ritual actions prescribed by the ancient rites. The object, if properly acted upon, would be a gu. The Brookses' translation fits nicely into the overall thematic fabric of the Analects, with one caveat: ``What a gu!'' can be understood as ``What a gu indeed!'' or as ``What a strange gu!'' The first affirms, unless we read irony into it, that a vessel no longer used as a gu is a veritable paradigm of a gu. This claim, we have seen, is at best controversial. The other suggests that a vessel not used as the rites prescribe that a gu should be usedÐthat is, a vessel that cannot guÐis estranged from the context that constitutes it and thus that there is something strange about calling it a gu. A major theme of the Analects is the occupancy through ritual performance of important social roles. The disregard for the rites of the ancients that is decried by the Master in 6.25 was a factor contributing to the corrupt political state of China referred to by Waley. When Duke Jing of Qi asked Confucius about effective government, the latter replied, ``The ruler must rule, the minister minister, the father father, and the son son.'' `Èxcellent!'' exclaimed the Duke. `Ìndeed, if the ruler does not rule, the minister not minister, the father not father, and the son not son, even if there were grain, would I get to eat of it?'' 22

One implication of this passage is that someone who fails to carry out the duties of a ruler, minister, father, and so on is not any of these things. For Confucius, someone who is supposed to rule but who fails to do so according to the rites and duties appropriate to his office would be a ruler in name only, a ``strange'' ruler. He also thought that one who is not learned in wen , ``culture,'' nor restrained by li ®, ``the rites'' and ``rules of ritual propriety,'' fails to be a junzi P, `èxemplary person,'' in any genuine sense of the term.23 Through rule-guided ritual performance, Confucius thought, important social offices are filled and the artifacts of culture are created. He clearly distinguished the utensils of a ritual from those who use them to perform the ritual. He even says, ``The exemplary person is not a utensil.'' 24 But he insisted that exemplary people (be they fathers, sons, rulers, ministers, and so on) as well as ritual utensils (and other artifacts of culture) are fragile social constructions coaxed into being by ritual performance and rule-guided behavior. A gu is what it is only because it is used, or can be used, as the rites of the ancient Shang rulers prescribed that a gu should be used. Analogously, an exemplary person is exemplary because he or she practices the rites and follows the rules of propriety with the sort of precision and emotional tone called for by the situation.25 One way to read 6.25 is as a warning to the student of the Confucian way. A comparison is being made. The constitution of sacred artifacts through their use as prescribed by the rites is being compared with the social construction of exemplary

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persons through their adherence to appropriate rules and conventions of propriety. The didactic purpose of the comparison is to encourage the shi ë or ``scholar apprentice'' to practice these rules and conventions. For just as a vessel not used as the ancient rites prescribe that a gu should be used would not be an authentic gu, so, too, the student who for any reason ignores appropriate rules and conventions of propriety (especially for comfort or profit) would be a scholar-apprentice in name only.26

Notes Thanks go to the members of the Early China Roundtable, especially Brian Van Norden, John Major, Elizabeth Childs-Johnson, and Sarah Allan, for their help and support. I am also indebted to Richard Garner, who read the penultimate draft and, as always, made important contributions to my work. Finally, I am grateful to Henry Rosemont Jr., for his valuable input to the final version. The contributions of these scholars exemplify one of the ideals of the Analects: ``You yourself want position, so you give position to others; you yourself want to advance, so you advance others.'' 1 ± Lunyu yinde (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1982), p. 11. 2 ± Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., trans. and introd., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Publishing Group of Random House, 1998), p. 109. 3 ± D. C. Lau, trans., Confucius: The Analects (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 84. 4 ± Edward Gilman Slingerland, trans., ``The Analects,'' in Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (New York and London: Seven Bridges Press, 2001), p. 18. 5 ± Some zun , such as Freer Gallery of Art number 55.1, and some gu, such as FGA number 07.34, look enough alike that they might be confused. 6 ± Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, p. 18. 7 ± Arthur Waley, trans., The Analects of Confucius (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938), p. 120. By Waley's numbering, the passage is 6.23. 8 ± Ibid. 9 ± Ibid. 10 ± The suggestion that the negation by bu of a compound character such as ming , that is, ``clear'' or ``to understand,'' amounts to the negation of the disjunction of its components, ri å, ``sun,'' and yue , ``moon,'' is so ludicrous that it is hard to imagine how Waley could have made this mistake in the case of gu.

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11 ± James Legge, trans., The Confucian Analects, in The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 192. 12 ± Freer Gallery of Art, no. 51.18. 13 ± John Alexander Pope and Thomas Lawton, The Freer Gallery of Art, 1, China (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1981), p. 153. 14 ± Raymond Dawson, trans., Confucius: The Analects (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 22. 15 ± Wen Fong, ed., The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People's Republic of China (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), p. 219. 16 ± An intrinsic feature of something is a feature that it has no matter what anyone believes about it or wants with regard to it, and no matter what else is true about it. The material composition of a gu, its being an alloy of copper and tin, for example, was an intrinsic feature of many, but not all, gu. 17 ± John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 2. 18 ± Ibid., p. 1. 19 ± See especially Analects 3.9. 20 ± E. Bruce Brooks and Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 36. 21 ± Ibid. 22 ± Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, p. 136. It is instructive to note how Ames and Rosemont treat constructions such as fu bu fu 6 6 and zi bu zi P P in this passage. They translate the second occurrences of fu and zi as verbs of action: ``The father (does not) father'' and ``The son (does not) son.'' Since both constructions are grammatically identical to gu bu gu Ú Ú, one can only wonder why they treat the second occurrence of gu in 6.25 as a noun phrase rather than a verb of action. Following their lead in 12.11, I suggest that 6.25 be rendered into English as follows: `À gu ritual vessel that does not function as a gu ritual vessel. An inauthentic gu! An inauthentic gu!'' 23 ± The Master said, `Èxemplary persons learn broadly of culture, discipline this learning through observing ritual propriety, and moreover, in so doing, can remain on course without straying from it'' (Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, p. 109). According to this, exemplary persons remain so through continuous learning and ritual performance. The proximity of this passage, Analects 6.27, to 6.25 is perhaps significant. 24 ± ``Junzi bu qi'' P h (Lunyu yinde, p. 3). 25 ± The Analects are ambivalent on the question of how closely the rites should be followed. Analects 3.4, for example, suggests that simplicity and genuineness

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of feeling are as important, if not more so, than precise execution. Verse 3.10, on the other hand, implies that the Master could not bear to watch rites that were not properly performed. Numerous passages supporting both sides of the question could be cited. I prefer to think that Confucius aimed to achieve a mean between precision and flexibility appropriate to the circumstance. 26 ± See Analects 14.2, especially in Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, p. 171.

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